Отдых удался.. Rest was good..

First time in Egypt. Compared to Turkey, I liked the climate here more - dry, with winds. Yes, the sun is powerful here, it was hot, but not stuffy at all. Well, somehow everything is more spacious, more - hotel areas, pools, rooms...
The territory of the Harmony hotel is very large, beautiful, clean, well-groomed, green, with 3 swimming pools, 1 "paddling pool" and a jacuzzi. Closer to the sea there is an unpopular salt lake. To the right of it is a beach restaurant, a playground, a football field. Settling vacationers in 3-storey villas, 4 rooms per floor. The numbers of the lines of the villas start from the sea, odd on one side (No. 1.3, 5.7), on the other even (No. 2.4, 6). Our room was spacious, clean (cleaning-change of linen daily), with a huge 2-bed, TV, air conditioning, ceiling fan, telephone and furniture; in the large bathroom there is a washbasin, a shower room, a bidet, a toilet bowl, a hair dryer and a telephone : ). There is a safe with a number lock and a tiny refrigerator. The room has almost the entire wall glass doors with access to the balcony and a beautiful view of the beach-sea (ours was No. 1423, i. e. 1 line, 4 villa, 2 floor, 3 room). By the way, there are no balconies on the first floors, there are, as it were, open terraces. Initially, we got such a number, but for $ 10 at the reception, I changed it to the desired one.
The food at the hotel is normal, varied, natural meat. There is food for almost all tastes and habits. No one limits the amount of food, take the supplement as much as your heart desires. Lots of fresh vegetables, herbs, huge olives, various sauces and side dishes, there are good soups. At dinner, chefs prepare meat dishes on the street (charcoal grill, shawarma). Dressed salads from stewed and fresh vegetables were not taken, after all, it was hot, you never know what. Locally produced alcohol is free everywhere, I don’t get carried away, I haven’t tried it, I took only local beer at lunch and dinner - pleasant, light, cold. I honestly didn’t like seafood: stewed crabs are small, there really is nothing in them, mussels are hard, tasteless; although the fish seems to be okay. Separate respect to the confectioner: pastries-buns are fresh, fragrant, cakes-pastries are delicious.

The hotel staff is polite, many understand English, with some it is quite possible to communicate in Russian. People are friendly, smiling, attentive, pleasant. All hotel employees really rustle according to their positions, dressed neatly and according to the dress code.
The animation is good, the program is varied, the guys and girls are trying their best, there were touring groups, dances with skirts, fire shows, etc.
What can I say about excursions, there are many and different ones, just unfasten the "green ones" : ) If you are going to swim and dive, then take care of your own underwater photographic equipment. Local "guides" can really make $20-25 for a video or CD with two or three dozen low-quality photos. At what pictures can click not even on the camera, but on the video camera in the box. The hotel has quad bikes. Fans of speed, heat and sand for $ 40 can drive on excursions in the hot desert for three hours, capturing the sunset and the Bedouin camp (long clothes are strongly recommended, simpler ones, which is not a pity to go haydak). By bus or taxi you can hit the road for shopping in Hurghada. There, acquaintances bought natural pearls really cheaply, you just need to look for shops.
Now more about the beauties of the Red Sea, for the sake of which I, in fact, went to Egypt. For those who want to learn diving, my strong advice is not to take it immediately on a yacht-boat from beach barkers. For the sake of a couple of dives, you spend the whole day, there are a lot of vacationers and they are recruited from different hotels, the instructors do not speak Russian well, places will not be shown the most interesting and beautiful, and of course you will pay more. Right there, at the Harmony Hotel, there is a beautiful living coral reef with rich fauna, fish of fantastic shapes, colors and sizes. If you are lucky, you will see a moray eel - a large brown one at a depth of ~10 m and a small white one in shallow water, octopuses, stingrays, stone fish, crocodile fish, turtles, etc. There are enough sea urchins, they mostly huddle in depressions and rocky crevices, so watch where you step. Sharks are not there, do not listen to incompetent people! Unless very small specimens of the gray reef shark swim here, but even then early in the morning and you can see them with great luck. With a light wind, the water is very clean, transparent (visibility is 30 meters), all the coral richness grows on a steep slope, the depth is first up to 40 m, and then all 80. Diving is organized by the PSI diving center. It costs $ 20, duration 25 minutes. Contact them yourself, they don’t walk along the beach and don’t invite you, their building is on the left on the hotel’s beach, near the bar (they have a second building with a shaded courtyard, if you count from the sea). Young local guys Michael, Sam and Mohammed work there (see photo). Michael speaks good Russian and English, he is also an instructor. Explains everything clearly, calmly, patiently. Even my Natasha, who categorically refused all my attempts to lure her into diving, was able to persuade, convince, first for a trial, and overcoming her fears, then for a full dive, which she later, of course, was glad of. Personally, I liked diving on our coral reef with the PSI-center guys so much that I devoted all the remaining days (and money : ) to this, regretting that I didn’t find out about the club right away. By the way, if anyone is interested, a diving course for obtaining an international certificate costs $340 and takes 4 days.

Local beach - hotel history. The main area of ​ ​ the beach is huge, 500 meters, with sunbeds, umbrellas and windscreens. But here the bottom of the sea here at first is very gentle, to the depth of knee-deep stomping in the water of 200-300 meters. By the way, at low tide, it is exposed almost completely. The hotel began to build a pontoon, but did not complete it. And it will not be built, at least in the foreseeable future, in order to preserve the local coral reef. But that's okay, everyone swims and sunbathes on the left side, on the border with the Azur 4 * hotel. For those who like to just splash around, there is a lagoon with a sandy bottom and, accordingly, unclear water and a lack of living creatures (well, except that I came across a stingray a couple of times, but at the bottom of hermit crabs crawl in shells). There, but at the far end of the island, there is that beautiful living coral reef, before it you need to wade through the bay of the lagoon and then the island itself. It is difficult to go over the rocks, after all, there is a coral reef (special slippers are required! . . as well as a minimum of a snorkel), but the inconvenience is compensated by the beauties of the underwater world.
As for swimming accessories - whether to take with you "coral" slippers, a mask-snorkel-fins - of course, everyone decides. All this disposable quality can be bought cheaply at a hotel (slippers, for example, $ 5), but I was not greedy and, in order not to spoil my vacation, I bought high-quality equipment at home from well-known manufacturers Tusa, Saekodive, Aqualung, which I never regretted .
In general, I consider the rest successful, and we really liked the hotel itself. Plus the fact that among the hotels of the "five" the cost of rest here is more loyal, the price-quality ratio is optimal. Of course, they maintain their own rules quite strictly, there are also jumps. For example, if you have a flight home in the evening or, worse, at night, then after returning your number and bracelets (?! ) at 12:00, you may still be fed lunch, but you can’t count on dinner and drinks. Only for a tangible surcharge in cash. Oh, and one more thing: around 19:00 everyone is driven from the beach, like they are closing it. The assumptions were different, but I did not understand the true reason for this jump.